“Yeah.”
“Bad?”
“Bad enough.”
Mike swore.
Diana said, “When? How bad?”
I said, “You didn’t tell Shelton that, did you?”
“I did.”
“Why? Now you have a motive,” Jennifer spoke my thoughts exactly. “We were thinking the rustling motive took attention right away from you. Weren’t we?”
“We were,” I said grimly. “We were not bargaining on you blabbing your potential motive to Wayne Shelton the first chance you had. No wonder they kept you so long.”
He appeared remarkably unaffected by our disapproval. “Wouldn’t have mattered if I told Wayne or not. He’d have known soon enough. As it happens, he knew already. If it’s a motive, I already had it. Might as well get it out in the open.”
“You’ve been in on what we’ve been doing this past year and more and you still don’t know that’s not how it works? You keep motive to yourself.”
“Why? Besides, even if Wayne didn’t know, you all would find it out soon enough. As you said, I’ve watched you in action.”
And then we’d have had to decide whether or not to let Shelton know. Had Tom, darn the man, intended to protect us from that decision-making or was that an accidental byproduct of his overactive honesty?
Didn’t matter. He’d handed over a motive wrapped up with a bow.
I pushed my hair back. “First words out of your mouth to Shelton, you told him Furman York backed a truck up to your land and loaded some of your cows onto it and sold them as his?”
“No.”
“No? But—
“That wasn’t first thing I told Wayne. Though… Look, I might as well repeat what I told Wayne.”
He took another drink of coffee. I got up to bring the pot to refill his mug and offer it to anyone else, with Diana and Mike as takers.
“Clyde—”
He questioned us again — mostly me — about whether we knew who that was.
We — I — did.
Clyde owned a neighboring ranch to Tom’s Circle B. He was one of the ranchers Lukasik had dismissed as part-timers for his job as a mechanic tending the mini-fleet of rental vehicles at the tiny airport.
“—told me he’d seen some of my brand mixed in with Lukasik’s on the Lukasik Ranch a couple days ago. Clyde had gone there to get back a horse trailer York borrowed months ago and never returned. He ran into Gable — Lukasik’s son — at the home ranch. Gable told Clyde where to find Furman York and directed him to a tucked away pasture Clyde had never known about. York was not best pleased to see him. Wanted to know who sent him, muttering about firing his ass.
“York being that worked up made Clyde curious, so he looked around real close without seeming to. Snapped a couple pictures with his phone of a Circle B cow who’d miraculously given birth to a Lukasik-branded calf.”
“What?”
He held up a hand to hold off my question. “I went over there yesterday and sure enough. York tried to make out it must have been a mistake made in the fall at the grazing association, when we separated out cattle. Pure bull, since we mostly have individual pastures. He knew it. I knew it. He still tried to brazen it out. Said since he’d fed the cows all winter, they should get to keep the calves. We had some words.”
Diana shook her head. Mike made a sound of disgust, then asked, “What did you do?”
“I’d gone with a horse trailer. I saddled up and trailed them to Paul Chaney’s place until I could arrange to trailer them home.”
I said, as calmly as I could. “Explain all that for the Easterner in the room. Except the part about you having words with York the day before he gets himself murdered and that last part — you trailed the cows to a friend’s ranch because you thought they’d disappear if left in York’s keeping. That I understand.”
“It’s another way of stealing cattle. You get a mother cow that’s not your brand in the fall. After she drops a calf in the spring, you slap your brand on the baby, and that calf becomes part of your herd,” Tom said.
“But if the mother cow still has the other brand…?”
“Exactly. It’s a darned, uh, gutsy thing to try. And the thieves are feeding all winter. Course that’s not much of a problem when your boss is paying for the feed and labor.”
“Eventually, wouldn’t someone spot the cow having the wrong brand for the ranch it’s on?”
“Probably,” Mike said. “Ranchers notice things like that.”
“They’re downright nosy. If calves aren’t branded according to what the cows are, somebody’s going to ask how come,” Diana said. “Was he going to try to hold onto them? Sell off the cows when the calves could be taken off them?”
Tom raised one shoulder. “I plan to ask around, see if he could have done this to other ranches other years. Pull it enough times and you’ve got a nice bump up in your herd. If you don’t get too greedy.”
“The grazing association counts cattle on and off, doesn’t it?” Diana asked.
Tom grimaced in apparent pain. “Supposed to. That rotates around and Lukasik Ranch’s been in charge the past year, which meant York.”
“Fox guarding the hen house,” Mike grumbled.
I pulled them back to an earlier point. “Tom, you said if he didn’t get too greedy, but according to Jack Delahunt, York did get greedy. And you weren’t surprised by what he told us.”
He looked up from his coffee mug and for the first time a filter of amusement softened the lines around his mouth and eyes.
And then the infuriating man took a drink of coffee. And said, “Good coffee.”
“Iris made it, not me, if that’s what you’re getting at. Now quit stalling.”
Amusement left.
“Adding in what Jack told you, I suspect Furman York was going around hitting association members — not the fancy touches like he did with my cows’ calves. Directly at the home ranches. Me, Clyde, the Chaneys, others. Cattle’s taken at night from somewhere hard to spot from the home ranch.”
“That’s despicable,” Diana said. “Using knowledge of your neighbors to steal from them.”
“Doesn’t get much lower,” Mike agreed.
Tom reached for another doughnut. “That’s pretty much what Wayne said.”
I gawked at him. “That’s what Wayne… Let me get this straight. First you told him about how you had this dispute yesterday with York over his poaching calves and—”
“Rustling,” came as a quartet.
“Rustling. A dispute over his taking some of your mother cows so their babies would be born on the Lukasik Ranch and branded before you caught them at it.
“And then — then — you told him that you, along with other members of the grazing association, have had more head outright stolen, and you believe York took them east and sold them where paperwork isn’t required and it’s possible to find livestock lots that follow the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell business plan. Am I right so far?”
“Yeah.”
“And you told Sergeant Wayne Shelton of the Cottonwood County Sheriff’s Department all this?”
“Pretty much.”
“Pretty much,” I repeated.
“Didn’t say it as strong as you put it. Didn’t know then what you all heard from Jack. All I had was a suspicion York might also be involved with rustling direct from grazing association members’ land.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. No alibi. I was alone, checking cattle on my own place. No way to prove it.”
“Of course,” I said bitterly.
“But why are you worried, Elizabeth? Tom’s not the main suspect, because Hiram Poppinger is,” Jennifer protested.
I responded with my own question to him. “Do they really think Hiram shot Furman York?”
Mike answered instead. “He was there. With a shotgun.”
“Hiram with a shotgun at the grazing association might work in the Cottonwood County version of Clue. It’s not enough for reality. Not nearly enough. And Shelton’s too smart not to see that.”
“Might not be his call.” Mike carefully did not look at Diana.
I brought it out in the open. “Sheriff Conrad? Maybe, but he’s probably too smart not to see that, too. And I sure hope he’s too smart not to ignore Shelton.”
Diana declined her head in mock thanks for the semi-compliment to her honey. And, I suppose, by extension to her, since she’d picked him.
“But,” Mike continued thoughtfully, “we don’t know the county attorney. Could Jarvis Abbott put pressure on the sheriff? Shelton, too, for that matter.”
“Conrad and Abbott worked together before coming here, so you’d expect them to listen to each other. Maybe holding on to Hiram is a ploy to lull the murderer into thinking the coast is clear and somehow that’s going to make him or her expose him- or herself.”
“Maybe.” Mike didn’t believe it.
“Hiram didn’t kill York,” Tom said.
I spun on him. Did the man not understand he pushed himself to the top of the suspect ladder by bringing Hiram down a rung? “What evidence do you have of that?”
I half expected him to say none, he just knew. Or that Hiram wasn’t capable of it, which was a stretch.
“How he was acting, especially when we first got there. He was fretting and cussing about needing to get on his way, he’d done his duty, and a man had the right to have a life. It didn’t cross his mind they could suspect him. Even later, when you all were there, he didn’t really believe it.
“Heck, at the sheriff’s office, he was still peeved at them interrupting whatever he had planned today. I had to lean on him to call James.” James Longbaugh was a lawyer of all trades in the county and the master of every one I’d seen him try so far. “Hiram said he wasn’t putting money in Longbaugh’s pocket for nothing. Nothing — that’s how he sees this.”
I wasn’t convinced, but it was a far better argument than I’d expected.
Apparently presenting it depleted Tom’s energy, because he sat back with the top of the couch back supporting his neck and closed his eyes.
No one responded. We all seemed caught in the waves of weariness emanating from Tom.
Until Jennifer sat up abruptly.
“Wait a minute. What was that you said on the way to O’Hara Hill, Elizabeth? Something about Hiram’s gun.”
“Right,” Mike perked up. “What you said you had to think over.”
“I did have to think it over. And you guys got plenty of payback with not telling me about Furman York’s past and his relationship with Norman Clay Lukasik before they were foreman and ranch owner.”
“Tell us about Hiram’s gun,” Mike ordered.
“I don’t know for sure it’s about Hiram’s gun.”
“Tell.”
I recounted what Hiram had said about the deputies taking his gun being high-handed and he hadn’t fired his gun. Diana and Mike nodded, confirming they’d heard that.
“Tom, I think you were too far away to hear that.”
He lifted one shoulder an inch. “Didn’t hear it or don’t remember.”
“Well, he said it. Next came hearing a sound as if someone were about to speak. Then motions. I looked over and caught the end of Richard pushing or lightly punching Lloyd’s arm to warn him off. As if he knew what Lloyd would say and he didn’t want him to.”
“That’s it?” Mike asked. “You caught a bit of movement and you might have been mistaken. Even if you weren’t, Richard could have been telling Lloyd to knock off just about anything.”
“Like what?” Jennifer demanded.
“I don’t know.” Pushed by her eye-roll, Mike said, “Picking his nose.”
“Gross.”
“Like I just said, I don’t know. But it could have been anything.”
“I don’t think so,” I inserted before Jennifer responded. “Timing was too perfect. That’s what I had to think through, whether it fit the one thing that occurred to me right off. I had to let it roll around in my head.”
“And? What’s the result of this internal pinball game?” Diana asked.
“I believe my first impression was right. That—”
“You never told us your first impression,” Mike complained.
Jennifer reached up from her floor cushions to backhand his upper arm. “She was about to. Be quiet, Paycik. Go ahead, Elizabeth.”
“We can’t know for sure,” I acknowledged. “With the way it happened and the timing, I’d say the most likely thing it meant was Lloyd was going to say it didn’t matter that Hiram hadn’t shot his gun.”
All of them frowned.
Jennifer spoke. “Why wouldn’t it matter that Hiram hadn’t shot his gun? It has to be important. York was shot, wasn’t he?”
“We don’t have confirmation he was shot—”
Tom interrupted. “He was shot.”
“How do you—?”
“Saw him. Screen came loose in the wind before they had it secured. He was shot.”
I said, “That’s got to help Hiram, since he wouldn’t shoot someone in the back.”
“He wouldn’t.” Tom didn’t open his eyes. “But York wasn’t shot in the back.”
As I sucked in a new supply of oxygen, I realized that somewhere deep down, I’d nursed the hope York had been shot in the back. Because no one who knew Tom Burrell even a little bit — say the way the new sheriff knew him — would believe he’d shoot someone in the back.
“York was shot and that means Hiram’s gun has to be important, especially whether it was shot or not,” Mike said.
I shook my head.
“Hiram’s gun wouldn’t be important if they already knew it wasn’t the murder weapon. And that’s what Richard didn’t want Lloyd to give away — to Hiram, to us, to anyone else listening.”
“How could they already know Hiram’s gun wasn’t the murder weapon?”
“Easy. They’d know Hiram’s shotgun wasn’t the weapon if the fatal shots were from a handgun or a bazooka or—”
“Bazooka?” Mike interjected.
“—anything else different enough from Hiram’s shotgun that it not being fired said nothing about whether or not Hiram could have killed York with this other, hypothetical weapon. If the injuries weren’t consistent with his gun—”
“They were,” Tom said. “Consistent with Hiram’s shotgun or a thousand others in the county, including mine.”
“So Furman York was shot with something consistent with Hiram’s gun, yet they already knew it wasn’t his gun, well before ballistics or anything? How is that possible?” Diana broke off and looked at me. “Unless…?”
“Exactly. They know Hiram’s gun isn’t the murder weapon because—”
Mike made a noise of discovery. “Got it. Because they already have the murder weapon. And it’s not Hiram’s gun. But then why aren’t they going after whoever it belongs to?”
They were following the same mental route I had. “Those are things I’ve been trying to sort out, though there hasn’t been much quiet time to work on it. Off the top of my head…”
“Off the top of your head…?” Mike urged.
“We shouldn’t get too attached to this theory,” I warned. “But what if they know Hiram’s gun wasn’t the murder weapon because they know the gun that killed Furman York belonged to York. That would also explain why they aren’t going after anybody.”
“York’s gun… Why didn’t Hiram see it when he found the body?” Mike asked.
“It was under the body.”
“Oh. That’s good,” Diana said. “And the deputies didn’t find out until the scientists moved York. Tom, did they move the body at all before we got there?”
His eyes slit open, he said, “Yeah. There was some talk about moving York. Shelton made sure I didn’t hear the rest.”
I nodded. “We’ll need to confirm Hiram didn’t move the body when he found York, looking for a pulse or something.”
“We’re saying this York guy was shot with his own gun?” Jennifer asked.
“That’s one possibility. The sheriff’s department could have the weapon and it’s not York’s, though they know who it belongs to — raising the question Mike asked of why the heck aren’t they going after the owner. Or they have the weapon and don’t know who it belongs to, which is more likely. Though I still think York’s gun being the murder weapon is the top theory.”
“Tom, have you seen York with a shotgun?” Mike asked.
“Yes. Keeps a couple in his truck and carries one a lot of the time, even just walking out in pastures.”
Jennifer frowned. “If the sheriff’s department knows Hiram’s gun isn’t the murder weapon, why are they holding him?”
“If York’s gun is the murder weapon, it means anybody could have taken it from his truck or grabbed it away from him and shot him, including Hiram,” I said. “They’ll do gunshot residue tests and such on him to help rule him in or rule him out.”
“Did they do those tests on you, Tom?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“What were the results?”
“They didn’t say, but there should be residue. Shot at a coyote near some calves early this morning.”
“You got it?” Mike clearly expected the answer to be yes.
“Nope. Got away.”
“But they let you go and they’re holding Hiram,” Jennifer said.
“Shelton’s irked at him,” Mike suggested.
I said, “Or he didn’t want Hiram giving away things he’d seen when he found the body.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” Diana agreed. “And it applies even if all or any of the other possibilities are true.”
Tom’s mouth twisted. “Could be any of what you all mentioned. Or maybe they want to make sure they keep Hiram alive.”
We all turned toward him.
“How?” Jennifer asked.
“To keep the murderer from taking out Hiram, setting him up as a scapegoat, hoping everyone accepts that he shot Furman York and the sheriff’s department would end the investigation?” Diana mused.
“That wouldn’t end the investigation,” I protested. “If Hiram was murdered, it would shift to his murder and the murderer would be even worse off because the potential fall guy was gone.”
“Wasted, so to speak,” Mike murmured. At our groans at the grim play on the word’s alternative meaning, he added, “Sorry.”
Tom stuck with the main thread of the discussion. “There are a lot of ways to die that don’t look like murder or are real hard to prove are murder.”
Mike nodded slowly. “A lot of ways on a ranch, especially for an old hot-head like Hiram, leaping before he looks.”